To: Dr. Chelsea McGuire
From: Dr. Water Staniszewski
Chair, Ad Hoc Enrollment
Management Committee
Date: March 23, 2005
Subject: Enrollment Management Plan
The Ad Hoc Committee on Enrollment Management has met on three occasions in the last mouth and conducted extensive research into enrollment management systems around the campus. Our goal was to determine the optimal system for stemming the flow of majors into the communication department. In order to reach our goal, we conducted a systematic survey of all other campus departments to determine if they, too, had experienced problems with over enrollment in the past ten years. If they had experienced this problem, we inquired about plans that had been instituted to deal with the problem as established how well these plans were working. We also carefully compared the characteristics of other campus department with relevant attributes of the communication department in considering options for dealing with our own enrollment management problems
After committee evaluation of possible solutions we have determined that three options are worthy of further departmental consideration:
Many departments have instituted additional course requirements for majors.
These have served to make the major less attractive to many students. Specifically, we might want to consider instituting a requirement of two years of a foreign language or a requirement of math and computer competency courses.
-Some departments have instituted strict grade point requirements for entry into the major. Although the university dies not encourage this type of plan, the departments believe it to have been highly successful. Specifically, we might want to consider instituting a 2.5 GPA requirement for entry into the major and continuation on the major.
-A few departments have instituted an ‘’application process’’ for admitting student so the major. Although this system would require additional paperwork on the part of the department, it would discourage students who were not truly interested in being communication majors from becoming majors.
The ad Hoc Committee on Enrollment Management is looking forward to a careful evaluation of these options at the upcoming faculty meeting.